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Your galleryThe Oath of the Seven Chiefs against Thebes
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Find the hands reaching into the bull’s blood at the center, then look up to the lightning over the city walls at upper right.
Girodet took this subject from Aeschylus’s Greek tragedy Seven against Thebes. The seven warrior chiefs of Argos plunge their hands into a sacrificed bull’s blood and vow to take Thebes, raising their weapons toward Ares and Enyo, gods of war, at the left edge. The firm black outlines and idealized nudes belong to Neoclassicism, the Cleveland Museum of Art notes, while the lightning and fierce faces look ahead to Romanticism.
Black chalks and white chalk with stumping and erasing on light brown wove paper · Overall: 41.8 x 62 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Neoclassicism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Oath of the Seven Chiefs against Thebes
- Artist
- Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (French, 1767–1824)
- Date
- c. 1800
- Medium
- Black chalks and white chalk with stumping and erasing on light brown wove paper
- Dimensions
- Overall: 41.8 x 62 cm (16 7/16 x 24 7/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.